Why I Swim

On Saturday, I will wake up at the crack of dawn and participate in Women Swimmin, a 1.2 mile swim in Cayuga Lake raising money for Hospicare and Palliative Care Services.  This will be my third swim and I'm no less excited than I was the first time. I'm always bowled over by the people at Hospicare thanking us for swimming- it really should be the other way around. I'm so proud to get to be a part of this event. Beyond feeling like I'm doing my own small part to make the world a teensiest bit of a better place, it gave me back swimming. I've wanted for years to get back in the pool and swim regularly again. Training for this event motivated me to start a regular swim practice and I'm very grateful.

Three years ago, the day I signed up for my first swim, I posted about why I was swimming. As I get closer to the event, I've been thinking of my uncle and I thought I'd re-post his story here. I swim in honor of my Uncle Fred Barnes and my sister-in-law, Cathy Bossard. They both benefited so much from hospice care; they were individuals with a very strong connection to their homes and hospice allowed them to spend their final days in the places they loved most. I swim for them, and for everyone who benefits from the amazing work Hospice does.

To everyone who has donated in support of my swim, thank you, thank you, thank you. It has meant so much during those early cold mornings to know you were out there cheering me on. As I plunge into that chilly lake water Saturday morning, I'll be thinking of you. And my Uncle Fred.

My uncle Fred & me

Three years ago, my brother was in town for his birthday and we decided to drive to Montour Falls and go to breakfast at one of my uncle's favorite places, Chef's. And then while we were in the area, we decided to set out on an adventure and find my uncle's old camp, a place that played a huge part in our childhoods but we hadn't visited since Fred passed away.

We did find it, through some half-assed directions (Dad- you need to know that a 'great big hill' means something entirely different to Ithaca people) and the miracle of Google maps on an iPhone.

It was so weird to be standing in a place you knew so well from childhood and that you hadn't visited in seventeen years.

My brother Kevin & sister Katie in front of
what used to be Fred's camp

My uncle Fred was my dad's oldest brother. He was a confirmed bachelor, and oftentimes something of a crank. He wasn't that crazy about small children, especially their germs, and would often decline hugs for that reason. As a painfully shy child, I was always relieved by this. Being made to hug people, even family, can be kind of unnerving if you're shy and I was always grateful to uncle Fred for letting me off

my dad, Uncle Fred, Uncle Bob

the hook, whether he knew it or not.

Once you got older, and could help out on the boat or ride snowmobiles or had learned not to mess with his stuff and not to slam the screen door, you were okay by him. He loved his boat and waterskiing, and he loved few things more than being able to brag that he had taught his nieces and nephews to ski, rarely needing more than two or three tries to get right up.

He also taught my dad how to waterski. This may not sound like such a big deal, but my dad lost his left leg above the knee in Vietnam serving with SEAL Team One. My dad learned how to waterski on one leg, years after he'd returned home and learned how to walk with a prosthesis. I remember being on the raft out on the lake watching as Fred called out instructions to my dad in the water, looking all roly-poly in his life vest, the tip of his one ski sticking out above the water like a little shark fin. I watched as Fred gunned the boat and raised my dad out of the water only to have him wobble and fall back in with a huge splash. I watched him do it over and over again. And over again. I heard my mom talking to my aunts about how she was worried Dad was getting tired or might get hurt.

me & my dad at the lake

I watched him try again and again. My dad wouldn't give up and Fred wouldn't give up on him. And then finally, he was up. And stayed up. And there he was, flying by us, on one leg, one ski cutting crisply through the water. I don't remember how old I was when this happened, but I remember being so proud of my dad that my eyes filled with tears and the tears spilled out on my cheeks as the boat's wake rocked the raft.

Fred lost an eye to cancer when he was a young man. They found a tumor on his optical nerve. If it had happened a few decades later, they most likely would've been able to remove the tumor and save the eye. (The neurologist and author Oliver Sacks was diagnosed with ocular melanoma nine years ago- although he lost sight in the eye, it was treated with radiation and lasers and left intact. Unfortunately, he learned earlier this year that his melanoma had metastasized to his liver, as happens in about 50% of ocular melanoma cases.) It wasn't a big deal to us. In a family where my dad had an artificial leg and my grandmother had full dentures, a glass eye was no big whoop. We used to joke that before long, we'd be able to make a whole new person just out of everyone's extra body parts.

my dad, Fred, my grandpa George,
Aunt MaryAnne (picking her nose) and Uncle Bob

Just before I graduated from high school, a checkup discovered a mass in uncle Fred's liver. He went for treatment and learned it was cancer. He had what they called recurring ocular melanoma, meaning it was a melanoma type of cancer that had originated in his eye,  and it would keep returning. Melanoma is a particularly deadly type of cancer- it's why skin cancers are so dangerous. (Melanoma is cancer of the melanocytes. Melanocytes are found in two places in your body: in your skin and in the colored parts of your eyes. Ocular melanoma is much rarer than melanomas that occur in your skin.) Melanomas don't respond well to traditional cancer treatments like chemo or radiation. The most successful way to treat melanoma is to remove as much of it as possible. And do so each time it comes back, and in each new location.

They removed nearly three-quarters of my uncle Fred's liver. (The liver is pretty cool, by the way. It regenerates!) It came back, took over his stomach and then it was just unstoppable. Fred's doctors were at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to his treatments, surgeries and check-in visits, he also participated in some trials for immunotherapy, which seemed to have a great deal of promise in treating melanomas. My dad drove him to his appointments and then brought him back to our house to recuperate until he felt strong enough to go back to the home he shared with his mother. He always needed to just be left alone after those doctors' visits. I'm learning that I'm a lot like him; we're people who need alone time to regenerate and recharge ourselves. Being surrounded by people- even those caring for us- is exhausting.

When he was at our house, we didn't fuss over him. He got Kevin's room when he stayed with us and he could come and go as he pleased. My mom would make sure we had his favorite foods (and snacks, most importantly) and if he needed anything, he just had to ask.

Bob, Fred, my dad & Grandpa George

Fred struggled to deal with the hand he had been dealt. Especially when they had to remove part of his stomach and he had to change his diet significantly. It frustrated him to no end that as a person who had always been so active, he was now tired and frail. Hospice was an enormous help when we finally called for their services. In addition to the things hospice is known for, like getting him set up with the necessary equipment so he could be at home and not have to deal with any more hospital stays, they provided support to his family members and counseled him, helping him work through his emotions.

I had just moved to Rochester to my first real grown-up apartment and grown-up job. I was lonely and didn't really like the city so I came home often. I observed the changes in Fred first-hand. Hospice helped him find peace. It was extraordinary to experience.

All the Barneses got together for Easter that year. Uncle Fred wanted to be a part of everything. He recorded everything on video. Even though he really couldn't eat, he sat at the table with us at each meal. He laughed at the cousins trying to balance spoons on our noses at the table. And when a bunch of us went out to the bar that night, he insisted on hugging each of us goodbye as we left. I'll always remember how fragile he felt, how it seemed like I could feel every bone in his body when he hugged me, and how tightly he held all of us, as if he was worried maybe it might be the last time.

Thanks to hospice, Fred was able to die in the place he loved best, his camp at Cayuta Lake.

Earlier in the day, before we set out to find Fred's "lost lake camp" and before we had breakfast at Chef's, I signed up for my first Women Swimmin'. I wonder now about that timing, if Fred somehow led us to his camp as a reminder of why this swim is important. I felt Fred with me that first year I swam. I thought about what a kick he would've gotten from me doing this event. So I did it again the next year. And I'm doing it this year as well.

You can support my swim and help others experience the services Fred did by clicking this link.

Just keep swimming… and ignore the creepy people in lane four

For those new to this blog,  this will be my third year doing a local fundraiser called Women Swimmin'. It's an event where 300+ women swim 1.2 miles across Cayuga Lake to raise money for Hospicare and Palliative Care Services. It's such a beautiful event- I wanted for years to participate. One of the things that absolutely blows my mind about it are the people associated with Hospicare who thank you for swimming. When you climb up on the dock once you've reached shore, there are Hospicare people waiting to hug you, offer you a blanket if needed, and thank you for doing this event. It should be the other way around; it's an utter privilege to do this.

Anyway, to prepare for the swim, I've been training at the A&E Center Pool at Ithaca College. Thanks to my work schedule and the hours the pool's open, the only time that works for me to swim laps is when the pool opens at 6:00am. Oh yeah. Six o'clock in the morning. Which means getting up at 5:30am. (The pool is only about a 5 minute drive from my house, but it takes me that long to wake up enough so that I feel it's safe for me to be on the road in a moving vehicle.) I am not, and never have been, even when I was very small child, a morning person. So showing up to the pool and swimming my mile and a half before 7am may actually be the greatest thing I've ever accomplished, or ever will.

It's a curious crowd at the pool at 6am. I don't know if it's the hour, or the kind of character (or lack of sanity and good sense) that brings one out of their warm soft bed to throw themselves into a chilly tank of water and flail your arms and legs hard enough that you start to sweat in the water. One thing's for certain- there are regulars here. Let me tell you a bit about them:

• Lane One- tall, lanky bald gentleman. Retired VIP with the college.  Does an interesting mix of one lap crawl, then this odd double-armed backstroke back. Sort of a two-armed Pete Townshend windmill stroke.
• Lane Two- me. Until recently when it had to be retired due to sagging-ass issues, in my Wondrous Woman suit. And goggles that leave me looking like someone hammered shot glasses
  
  into my eye sockets. (Thank god for Bruise Relief gel.)
• Lane Three- This woman is intimidating. She is here EVERY SINGLE DAY. I am not kidding. During the school year, I'd occasionally change my schedule around and swim on a Tuesday or Thursday instead of MWF. She'd be there. I'd switch it up and get my laps in on a Saturday. She was there. Beyond the disconcerting idea that maybe she's some kind of pool ghost that haunts the middle lane, that is some goddamned dedication. She swims exactly the same workout at exactly the same time, every single day the pool is open. I can tell what time it is by where she is in her workout. In spite of the fact that we have encountered each other in this environment for the past three years, we never speak. It's an unwritten rule of respect- we will not waste each other's time with the frivolity of chat. She does not suffer fools gladly.
• Lane Four- Creepy couple. This middle-aged pair is a recent addition to morning swim. When I first encountered them, they were making out like bandits outside the women's locker room. At 5:55am. On a Friday. I can't even look people in the eye at this hour. I actually had to tap the woman on the shoulder in order to get past her to go in and change. And then, curiously, as I was standing at the sink getting my swim cap on, I saw through the mirror the woman come in, strip down to just her hoodie
  
  and stand pantsless holding her bathing suit under the hand dryer. She then put the dried suit on, went out to the pool and got in the water. She and her male partner (who wears a polo cap that snaps under his chin and reminds me of Teddy Beckersted from One Crazy Summer) then proceed to canoodle at one end of the pool, maybe paddle one length, then whisper sweet nothings to each other over their kick boards as they leisurely make their way back to the other end. They do about four lengths of the pool, then leave. The woman dries herself under the hand dryer again (WTH?) then they go out in the hallway and suck face outside the women's locker room entrance. They only appear on Fridays. Facebook feedback suspects they are a couple having an affair at which I must roll my eyes. That has to be the lousiest affair ever. "Hey baby, come to the pool with me at the butt-crack of dawn and swim laps with me!" What a fun sexy time for them. 

• Lane Five- As of the past couple of weeks, Lane Five has been dominated by a woman who seems to have a Single White Female thing for Lane Three woman. She also wears these paddle-type devices on her hands, and goggles yet no swim cap. (Although Lane Five does a very leisurely crawl stroke, while Lane Three, to my befuddlement, swims a very vertical breaststroke with the paddles on her hands.) Lane Five also times her workouts to Lane Three, abruptly leaving the pool when she sees Lane Three get out. She has often tried to engage Lane Three in conversation in the locker room, but Lane Three, while polite, quite firmly discourages this. As I've said before, Lane Three does not have time for meaningless chitchat. It's Business Time for Lane Three woman.
  
• Lanes Six-Exceptionally hairy dude in a Speedo who likes to dolphin-kick a lot and uses a snorkel. One day I was swimming in Lane Five and when I reached the wall at the end of a set, I looked up to him sitting nearly spread-eagled on the deck, his crotch directly above my head, adjusting his snorkel's headgear. It was enough to make my bypass my rest period and dive back underwater.
• Lanes 7-9 tend to be the pros, the off-season swim team members or masters swimmers, sometimes two to a lane, which is nice of them to leave the entire lanes for the rest of us weirdos.

There's also occasionally an older Asian woman who takes extremely seriously the whole "please shower before entering the pool" directive that the rest of us wantonly disregard, a portly white-haired Wilford Brimley-looking man who also does a flinging two-armed backstroke and always wears his eyeglasses in the water, and my recent favorite, the two college-aged girls who got into a screaming, sobbing, knock-down drag-out fight in the locker room over the fact that one of them was not listening to the other. Or something.

You may think that perhaps I'm not paying enough attention to my own workout if I'm noticing all this

about my fellow swimmers, but in the course of 50 laps (the pool is set in 50 meter lanes now) there isn't an awful lot else to look at and one's mind does tend to wander. I figure I'm honing my observation skills, as well as building my endurance.

For more about why I'm doing Women Swimmin', visit this post from a few years ago. And if you're feeling generous, you can support my swim by going here. In addition to making my morning encounters worthwhile, your gift will be used to provide items such as medications, oxygen & medical equipment, as well as emotional, psychological, social & spiritual support to patients, families and friends facing the hard issues of mortality and loss. Hospicare's services are available to everyone in the community regardless of their ability to pay.  So in addition to enabling my chlorine habit, you'll be doing a good, good thing. Thank you.

Of E.R.s and I.D. cards

Oy vey, I have not posted in a very long time.
It has been a very eventful summer, to say the least.
Some highlights:

• I've spent time in four different hospital emergency rooms since May. Not as a patient. Four different hospitals. In two states. I am getting gooood at this shit. I don't want to be. (Both family members who needed emergency medical care are now much, much better. I don't want to sound like I'm whining; I'm very glad I was able to help out. It's scary. It's hard not to count your blessings, sitting in an

  

  They hide the washcloths in those cupboards up there.

  emergency room. We were lucky in our cases; everything was going to be okay, and with some work, even better than before. A lot of other people waiting with loved ones weren't getting good news.)
• I swam across a lake. I participated in Women Swimmin', a fundraiser for Hospicare of Tompkins County for the first time. It was tremendous. Beyond being such a great thing to be a part of (and having an amazing romp of girls to train & swim with), it was my bright spot throughout three really difficult months at

  

  My beautiful Misfit Otters

  work. Every time I got a notification that someone else had donated to my swim, it made my day, even when I'd just spent two hours on the phone with someone explaining to me in great detail exactly why it was important for him that the toilets in our new development have elongated bowls, not round. (You don't want to know. Trust me.)
• My dear friend Ledbetter moved to Ithaca. LB got a job at Ithaca College, our alma mater, and moved to Ithaca. Now she works less than a half-mile away from me and is available for adventures! So far, we've done Feast Fridays, went out for cocktails, spent loads of time at Wegmans, and attended meditation class. We've watched documentaries on the Dust Bowl, a homeless camp in Nashville and a Filipino guy who is now the new lead singer for Journey. I am so proud of her for

  

  I don't wanna hear it, Ledbetter,
  I love this picture of us.

  being so brave- moving to a new state, starting a new job, facing off with spiders.

Anyway, one of the things I HAVEN'T done is keep up this blog. I stumbled after I ran out of letters of the alphabet and even though I initially thought numbers were a pretty easy (and infinite) source of blog post inspiration, it didn't do anything for me. Then I had to do resident ID card photos yesterday.

Twice a year, we take residents' photos for ID cards. They're completely optional- folks are required to wear nametags here the first seven days of every month to help everyone get to know each other, but they don't need anything more than the little pin-on card with their name that they get when they move in. But some people requested a nametag with a photo, like the staff have to wear, so we offer up photo day twice a year.

© Tom Hussey. Go here: http://www.tomhussey.com/
to see the rest of this series called Reflections from an
award-winning ad for an Alzheimer's medication.

I have a piece of black fabric I put up as a backdrop, snap their mugshots, and then laminate them up a nametag. It's actually kind of fun. I get to meet the new people who've just moved here and joke around with them to get them to smile. But it's a little sad, too. Most older people really don't like getting their photo taken. For one thing, this generation is not the "selfie generation" we have today. But the photos also show how time has changed them. We all have an image in our minds of what we think we look like; it's often an image from a younger time in our lives. It's a bit of a shock sometimes when I show them the screen of my camera and they see an old person looking back. I hear that a lot- "Who's that old person?" I also hear, "Well, I guess that's me." Even though they may look in the mirror every day to shave and put on makeup, they don't expect to see clouded eyes, wrinkled skin, lopsided mouths, discolored teeth when they see themselves in the camera.

I had a lull in activity and I was poking around the game room where we stage the photos while I waited for the next group. I saw a little lucite box filled with cards- white with black print. The first one said, "Who do you sorely miss?"  It struck me, because I had recently been missing my grandma Genevieve more than usual. I flipped through the other cards in the box; they were discussion questions, table topics, part of an old game. I liked the questions they asked, so I've decided to use these cards as my blog post themes until they run out.

So, tune in next week, when our theme will be Who Do You Sorely Miss.
And please share your answers as well.

Y is for ...

Y is for...

My uncle Fred & me

Y I'm doing this.
(Pun intended. It'll make sense. Just stick with me for a bit.)


Initially I was going to write about this incident when I was a kid when we went to my Uncle Fred's camp at Cayuta Lake and the adults all got hammered and kept playing the Village People's YMCA (on 45, nonetheless) and singing and dancing around the campfire and we kids trying to sleep in the tent out front were getting more and more pissed because the damn noisy adults were keeping us awake and WE WERE JUST TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP, FOR LORD'S SAKE.

But then my brother was in town for his birthday this past weekend and on Monday, we decided to go to Montour Falls and go to breakfast at one of my uncle's favorite places, Chef's. And then while we were in the area, we decided to set out on an adventure and find my uncle's old camp.

We did find it, through some half-assed directions (Dad- you need to know that a 'great big hill' means something entirely different to Ithaca people) and the miracle of Google maps on an iPhone.

It was so weird to be standing in a place you knew so well from childhood and that you hadn't visited in seventeen years.

My brother Kevin & sister Katie in front of
what used to be Fred's camp

My uncle Fred was my dad's oldest brother. He was a confirmed bachelor, and oftentimes something of a crank. He wasn't that crazy about small children, especially their germs, and would often decline hugs for that reason. As a painfully shy child, I was always relieved by this. Being made to hug people, even family, can be kind of unnerving if you're shy and I was always grateful to uncle Fred for letting me off

my dad, Uncle Fred, Uncle Bob

the hook, whether he knew it or not.

Once you got older, and could help out on the boat or ride snowmobiles or had learned not to mess with his stuff and not to slam the screen door, you were okay by him. He loved his boat and waterskiing, and he loved few things more than being able to brag that he had taught his nieces and nephews to ski, rarely needing more than two or three tries to get right up.

He also taught my dad how to waterski. This may not sound like such a big deal, but my dad lost his left leg above the knee in Vietnam serving with SEAL Team One. My dad learned how to waterski on one leg, years after he'd returned home and learned how to walk with a prosthesis. I remember being on the raft out on the lake watching as Fred called out instructions to my dad in the water, looking all roly-poly in his life vest, the tip of his one ski sticking out above the water like a little shark fin. I watched as Fred gunned the boat and raised my dad out of the water only to have him wobble and fall back in with a huge splash. I watched him do it over and over again. And over again. I heard my mom talking to my aunts about how she was worried Dad was getting tired or might get hurt.

me & my dad at the lake

I watched him try again and again. My dad wouldn't give up and Fred wouldn't give up on him. And then finally, he was up. And stayed up. And there he was, flying by us, on one leg, one ski cutting crisply through the water. I don't remember how old I was when this happened, but I remember being so proud of my dad that my eyes filled with tears and the tears spilled out on my cheeks as the boat's wake rocked the raft.

Fred lost an eye to cancer when he was a young man. They found a tumor on his optical nerve. If it had happened a few decades later, they most likely would've been able to remove the tumor and save the eye. It wasn't a big deal to us. In a family where my dad had an artificial leg and my grandmother had full dentures, a glass eye was no big whoop. We used to joke that before long, we'd be able to make a whole new person just out of everyone's extra body parts.

my dad, Fred, my grandpa George,
Aunt MaryAnne (picking her nose) and Uncle Bob

Just before I graduated from high school, a checkup discovered a mass in uncle Fred's liver. He went for treatment and learned it was cancer. He had what they called recurring ocular melanoma, meaning it was a melanoma type cancer that had originated in his eye and it would keep returning. Melanoma is a particularly deadly type of cancer- it's why skin cancers are so dangerous. (Melanoma is cancer of the melanocytes. Melanocytes are found in two places in your body: in your skin and in the colored parts of your eyes. Ocular melanoma is much rarer than melanomas that occur in your skin.) Melanomas don't respond well to 'normal' cancer treatments like chemo or radiation. The most successful way to treat melanoma is to remove as much of it as possible. And do so each time it comes back, and in each new location.

They removed nearly three-quarters of my uncle Fred's liver. (The liver is pretty cool, by the way. It regenerates!) It came back, took over his stomach and then it was just unstoppable. Fred's doctors were at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to his treatments, surgeries and check-in visits, he also participated in some trials for immunotherapy, which seemed to have a great deal of promise in treating melanomas. My dad drove him to his appointments and then brought him back to our house to recuperate until he felt strong enough to go back to the home he shared with his mother. He always needed to just be left alone after those doctors' visits. I'm learning that I'm a lot like him; we're people who need alone time to regenerate and recharge ourselves. Being surrounded by people- even those caring for us- is exhausting.

When he was at our house, we didn't fuss over him. He got Kevin's room when he stayed with us and he could come and go as he pleased. My mom would make sure we had his favorite foods (and snacks, most importantly) and if he needed anything, he just had to ask.

Bob, Fred, my dad & Grandpa George

Fred struggled to deal with the hand he had been dealt. Especially when they had to remove part of his stomach and he had to change his diet significantly. It frustrated him to no end that as a person who had always been so active, he was now tired and frail. Hospice was an enormous help when we finally called for their services. In addition to the things hospice is known for, like getting him set up with the necessary equipment so he could be at home and not have to deal with hospital stays anymore and providing support to family members, they counseled him and helped him work through his emotions.

I had just moved to Rochester to my first real grown-up apartment and grown-up job. I was lonely and didn't really like the city so I came home often. I observed the changes in Fred first-hand. It was amazing to watch someone grow so quickly. It was almost as if he had achieved the mellowing that might naturally come from a good long old age. Hospice helped him find peace. It was extraordinary to experience.

All the Barneses got together for Easter that year. Uncle Fred wanted to be a part of everything. He laughed at the cousins trying to balance spoons on our noses at the table. And when a bunch of us went out to the bar that night, he insisted on hugging each of us goodbye as we left. I'll always remember how fragile he felt, how it seemed like I could feel every bone in his body when he hugged me, and how tightly he held all of us, as if he was worried maybe it might be the last time.

Thanks to hospice, Fred was able to die in the place he loved best, his camp at Cayuta Lake.

And that brings us back to "Y."

Earlier on Monday, before we set out to find Fred's "lost lake camp" and before we had breakfast at Chef's, I signed up for a fundraiser called Women Swimmin'. It's a 1.2 mile swim across Cayuga Lake (not Cayuta) and it raises money for Hospicare and Palliative Care Services of Tompkins County.

And uncle Fred is why ("Y") I'm swimming.

I'm also swimming for my sister-in-law Cathy Bossard, who was strikingly like Fred in her independence, dry sense of humor, and fierce devotion to the home she built and designed from scratch. 

You can support my swim and help others experience the services Fred did by clicking this link.
Thank you so very much for helping me honor Fred's and Cathy's memories.

X is for...

X is for... X10.

Otherwise known as my friend, Christen.

She will probably be horribly embarrassed by this, but I think she's super-cool and you all on the interwebs should know it.

Yes, I'm sure you thought I would go with something shocking (x-rated) or perhaps medical (x-rays) or Duchovny-esque (I don't have to say it, do I?) for this post, but that seemed too easy and frankly, kinda cliche. I thought it would be more interesting to dedicate it to my friend X10.

She is exceptionally generous- when we were replacing our deck, she and her husband came over & helped without even being asked.

She has a cute weiner (dog).

She's a real cool dancer.

And photogenic as well.

She's astonishingly tall.

And had never used public transportation until the night we took this picture.

She participates in Women Swimmin', a fundraiser for Hospicare that involves swimming across Cayuga Lake.
I hope to join her this year.

She has a huge heart, as evidenced by her adopting this beautiful broken kitty.

She is fun to travel with.
Best quote ever: "I love Vermont! You wake up with no hangover and
the coffee comes out of the wall!"

And she is capable of great feats of strength.

Christen is going back to school to study nursing and I admire the heck out of her for juggling school, work, her pets, crazy friends, and everything else life can throw at you and making it all look easy. She is awesomesauce incarnate and I am lucky to call her my friend.